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Monthly Archives: May 2009
Australia day 73 – Shark Bay to the Murchison River, WA
Before we leave Shark Bay to drive south to Kalbarri we stop at Hamelin Pool, the easterly of the two main bays that make up the area that is known as Shark Bay and home to colonies of marine stromatolites.. This is a sublimely serene place; crystal clear water, not a breath of wind or a whisper of sound other than the crunching of our feet on the shells compacted into ridge formations along the foreshore. Small cumulus and wispy clouds sitting on the horizon are reflected in the mirror like surface of the sea making it impossible to tell where the sea and sky meet. The absence of the horizon combined with the stillness gives this place an dream-like, other-worldly quality – as though time stood still, which in another way it has.
A 47-mile sandbar spans the bay, controlling the influence of the tides and making this area one of the few places in the world where the conditions still exist to support colonies of stromatolites. Single cell cyanobacteria which are similar to the earliest forms of life dating back 3.5bn years thrive in the highly saline waters of Hamelin Pool. Microbes such as these played a crucial role in the evolutionary process by releasing oxygen from the oceans to create an atmosphere that could support life on land. A boardwalk provides access to the three main stramatolite rock formations: discs – remnants of earlier growths before the sea level receded, mats in the shallows and stacks in the deeper waters. The water is so clear that it is almost invisible and the fish at weave their way around the stromatolites look as though they are gliding unsupported.
The old telegraph station built in 18884 is the focal point of the camp site which lies back from the beach. Decommissioned as recently as the 1970s this was originally the connecting station between Perth and Roebourne further up the coast. Now it is a rather charming, incongruous, shop selling clothes, knick knacks and souvenirs, visitors centre and tea rooms with some interesting old photographs adorning the walls.
Onward to Kalbarri through mostly low-growing shrubland with the occasional tree here and there. Until somewhere north of the Murchison River the landscape changes dramatically as we come upon an area of what must be the start of the wheat belt – and the rolling topography is covered in ploughed fields and stubble.
Tonight we are camping at the Galena Bridge Rest Area which straddles both sides of the Murchison River just off what must have been the original highway, now superseded by the National Coastal Highway and a newer and taller bridge. This is a lovely spot just back from the wooded banks of the river. It’s also very popular – there must be at least 20 vans of varying sizes from our little transit to huge caravans and Winibagos. A chat with a man from Manchester travelling with an enormous Alsatian who, after 35 years in Australia, had managed to retain a thick Manchunian accent, delays dinner briefly.
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Tagged Australia, Murchison River, Shark Bay, Western Australia
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Australia day 72 – Denham, WA
We stayed at the caravan site in Denham again last night; the free camps just outside town are requires a permit which can’t be issued for consecutive nights. So we are alternating between a paid for pitch in town and the free one’s down the coast. It’s not clear whether there is a commercial motive behind this restriction or simply a shortage of sites; in fact tonight Eagles Bluff is full and we are allocated at site at Fowlers Camp a little further down the coast. The weather seems to have recovered from the cold snap and the temperature hovers around 25 degrees when the sun is out but it becomes quite cool at night. Dark rain clouds are dropping rain further up the coast, but fortunately they are not heading this way.
We did some laundry this morning but didn’t have time to dry it before having to leave our pitch. So we spend the morning on the edge of little lagoon just outside town. To onlookers we must look like gypsies with our washing strung out across the sandy parking area! Little Lagoon is an ancient barrida – a long-dried lake which has become flooded by the sea. The undulating shrubland of Shark Bay is dotted with these dry, circular depressions from a long-ago age. The lagoon is a pale blue fringed by a white sand beach. In the afternoon we walk along the mangrove-lined creek that links the lagoon to the sea. The tide is coming in creating the odd sight of its fast moving, crystal clear flowing away from the sea. There is a narrow, deserted beach at the mouth of the creek and we sit a while enjoying the gentle lapping of the waves and the sun on our skin.
Fowlers Camp turns out to be a picturesque campground on the edge of a very shallow and sheltered bay. Mangroves grow in the shallows and a long sandbar is revealed at low tide. In the late afternoon the fish are jumping and the quiet is broken by the occasional plop as they break the surface of the water. Andy manages to catch one, but too small to keep. This too, turns out to be a popular spot tonight, with several other vans parked up for the night.
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Tagged Australia, Denham, Shark Bay, Western Australia
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Australia day 71 – Denham, Shark Bay, WA
A very early start this morning sees us up well before dawn and on our way to Monkey Mia about 50 km from our overnight camp at Eagles Bluff for the feeding of the wild dolphins. The dolphins have been coming to Monkey Mia every morning for their breakfast since the early sixties. They come right up to the beach to be fed and this morning there are a pod of 11 – three generations of three family groups the oldest being around 35 and the youngest five years old. Now the whole spectacle is commercialised, contained and controlled by the rangers, unlike the days when people could come here for free and swim with the dolphins unfettered by rules and regulations. All of which are, of course, in the interests of humans (who apparently have an uncanny knack of getting bitten when they put their fingers in dolphins mouths) and dolphins who were being harassed and fed the wrong diet and as a consequence weren’t looking after their young or foraging for themselves. Nowadays, it costs $6 to enter the small resort area known as Monkey Mia and there is well-defined and regulated feeding ritual. The dolphins arrival is heralded by two pelicans that know the drill and want a bit of the action. At 7.30 am on cue the first of the dolphins arrive, soon to be followed by several more. Over the next half-an-hour the ranger takes us through his patter about the history of Monkey Mia and some interesting facts about dolphins all the while the dolphins wait patiently, swimming up and down the shallows only a few feet from the expectant crowd. At eight o’clock about half-a-dozen volunteers appear with buckets of fish, the small crowd step back out of the water and the feeding begins. (In the meantime the pelicans being distracted by another volunteer who craftily has a decoy yellow bucket of fish at the back of the beach; the pelicans wait patiently for their feed unaware of this subtle deceit) Selected members of the crowd are invited to hand feed the dolphins including Andy. The feeding of the last fish is synchronised to prevent the oldest dolphin from stealing from the others. The buckets are filled with water and emptied into the sea; this signals to the dolphins tat the feed is over and immediately they head back out to sea. Feeding time is over. Until the dolphins decide to come back, which they do about 10 minutes later and the whole ritual begins again. The dolphins are fed up to three times a day as long as they come back before midday and the amount of fish they are given is strictly controlled. .An experience definitely worth making the 100 km detour to Shark Bay and much better than dolphin-watching from a boat.
We spend the rest of the day at Monkey Mia walking along the beach, sun bathing and fishing. The weather is as good as a hot English summer’s day and this is a very pleasant place to spend it doing nothing much.
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Tagged Australia, Denham, Shark Bay, Western Australia
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Australia day 71 – Denham
It was a freezing cole night and we wake to find lots of cndensation on the inside of the van roof. It’s remarkable how radically the weather has changed since we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn just south of Coral Bay. There was a big storm around the Perth area last Thursday which brought power lines down and left 85,000 homes without electricity and it seems to have affected the weather system right up the coast. We are hoping that it is a short cold snap and normal services will be resumed shortly! But in the meantime we are taking no chances and have bought a couple of cheap fleece rugs-cum-blankets for extra warmth at night.
Despite the increasing cold at night, today is a gloriously sunny, although chilly, start to the day, with clear blue skies. A welcome change after several predominantly cloudy days. It’s a good da for a bit of sight-seeing and Ocean Park Natural Marine Exhibition makes for an interesting stop a few kilometres outside Denham. Here there are several types of live sharks in an open topped tank – tiger sharks, lemon sharks and reef sharks – along with two huge cod, which don’t get eaten by the sharks so long as the latter are fed regularly! There are several other tanks with a variety of tropical and temperate fish, shovel nose rays and sing rays, turtles, sea snakes, the incredibly well-camouflaged rock fish, snappers, crayfish emperors and much more.
Further round the coast lies Shell Bay with it’s wonderfully white beach that has been created naturally from hundreds of millions (and more) Fragum cockles which grow in profusion in L’Haridon Bight and are washed up in the bay in such proliferation to create a 120km beach thought to be up to 4000 years old. Compacted shell has been quarried for building blocks and used as building blocks although now only for renovation purposes. Loose shells, not surprisingly as a renewable resource, ard continue to be mined commercial for paths and driveways
Australia day 70 – Shark Bay, WA
It’s a lovely walk along the beach at Eagles Bluff; north as far as a small creek too deep to wade across and then south a kilometre or so until the boardwalk we visited yesterday comes into view. There is absolutely no one else here and the beach is pristine. Sheltered by sand dunes, it is perfectly calm, not even a ripple or a whisper of lapping waves. We then head for Denham and a commercial caravan park to catch up on laundry and have a shower. Denham is a charming little town with a population of 1140. It’s rather laid back main street fronts a calm ocean and the small jetty is popular with anglers who seem only to be able to reel in tiddlers too small to warrant gutting and filleting and in any case are outside the official bag limits. We spend a quiet afternoon sitting on the jetty in the warm sunshine and at last Andy catches his first (edible) fish of the trip albeit too small to keep.
Denham is also the first town where we have seen emus walking down the main street – or any street for that matter. Tourist literature as well as Lonely Planet tell of emus strolling around the streets of small towns, but these are the only ones we have seen outside Cape Range National Park. The latter are timid and avoid human contact, whilst those in Denham seem unphased by people and traffic as they wander down the centre of the road.
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Australia day 69 – Carnarvon to Shark Bay, WA
We leave Gladstone camping early .Rain is threatening and we have been warne that the 6km unsealed road to the highway becomes impassable, particularly for 2wds, after rain.We stop at a lookout a little further and have breakfast over-looking the ocean. The on to Shark Bay another couple of hours away. Shark Bay is a World Heritage-listed site with a unique ecological system of stromatolites, sea grasses and a mix of tropical and temperate marine fauna hich make it the most diverse marine environment in Australia if not the world. Located on the most western point of the continent and protected by two peninsulars, it covers a vast area of 25,000 sq km of prisine bays, lagoons, island and the largest natural harbour between Perth and Broome Denham, the only town in the area, is a small holiday resort that attracts holiday-makers for a range of activities, from fishing and kayaking to 4wd tours, snorkelling and wildlife spotting… and of course the famous wild dolphins of Monkey Mia which come into shore every day to be fed. There is an excellent boardwalk at Eagle Bluff on the way into town which affords a superb view of the coastline as well as the crystal clear azue and deep blue waters of the Indian Ocean below. Apparently it is possible to see sharks and manta rays from the Bluff, but not today.
At another lookout further along the coast we get chatting to three girls travelling in a Wicked camper with the intention of doing the journey up to Darwin in 3 weeks. Bearing in mind that we’ve already spent seven weeks on the road and have about another 800 km, they are going to have their work cut out particularly if they want to stop and see anything!
There is some limited free camping just off the coast road as it approaches Denham, for which a permit is necessary and then it is only possible to camp for one night. So we phone ahead and obtain the permit and find spot just above the dunes with a stunning view of several kilometres of coastline.
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Australia day 68 – Carnarvon, WA
The camp ground at New Beach is a bit bleak even in the morning sunlight and the high tide come right up to the edge of the camping area – just as well we parked well back otherwise we could have woken to find ourselves stepping out into the sea! The weather has turned much cooler since we arrived in Carnarvon and the night’s are very chilly; so much so that we have had to take to wearing clothes in bed to keep warm! It takes several hours after dawn for the ambient temperature to become warm enough to warrant shedding fleeces. Today the weather is overcast, windy with intermittent showers. It could be an English summer’s day! We are beginning to rue having left Coral Bay and warmer climes. We are debating whether to retrace our steps back north as originally planned in the hope of better weather or continue to head south to Shark Bay and Monkey Mia. On balance we come to the decision to continue south since we want to see the dophins at Monkey Mia .
Today is Daniel’s 20th birthday, so we are staying in Carnarvon in order to be able to skype him from the local internet cafe. The seven hour time difference means that calling at 3pm wakes Dan at the’ ungodly’ hour of 8am UK time to wish him Happy Birthday. But he takes it rather stoically. We rough camp Gladstone camping area two hours south just off the coastal highway, 20km south of Wooramel Road House. This stretch of coastline has several camping bays, a couple of a pit toilets and few campers.
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Tagged Australia, Carnarvon, Western Australia
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